As Garsington Opera launches its season, Stuart Macbeth meets some of the stars

I’m on way to see Garsington Opera rehearse for their forthcoming season. So far it’s not what I had expected.

For one thing I’m crossing a concrete flyover in East London with broken glass underfoot. I pass a derelict caravan and the ruins of a multi-storey car park. Not even super-sized barbed wire could keep the vandals out.

It’s a far cry from Wormsley Estate, where the company will perform throughout June and July. I’ve enjoyed many magical evenings of opera there, in the pavilion under the stars. Or picnicking in the grounds, where you are more likely to bump into a Jeff Koons sculpture than a burnt-out Vauxhall Corsa.

After a few hundred yards of urban wasteland, a cobbled path emerges which winds across the River Lea to a converted warehouse.

Here I clear security with a straight face before being escorted to the top floor to meet soprano Andreea Soare and mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge.

Both are 28, making their Garsington debuts this season.

They’ve taken a break to meet me while preparing for their roles as sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella in Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte.

Cosi is one of three operas in rehearsal today, along with Strauss’s Intermezzo and Britten’s Death in Venice. The company will also perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream this summer, in collaboration with the RSC. But it’s Cosi that opens first, on June 5. “We’re now two weeks into our rehearsals” Andreea reveals as we stroll through the building. Her home town is Râmnicu Vâlcea in Romania, although she has made her home in Paris since 2004.

“Once we finish here will go into dress rehearsals at Wormsley, and then the orchestra join us about a week before the opening night.”

I ask Kathryn if the singers had met before rehearsals started? I assume there will have been a lavish welcoming ceremony.

“No one in the cast had met before“ she smiles, speaking in a chirpy Liverpudlian accent. “We were all brought together at Rudolf Steiner House for a musical rehearsal. and to hear John Fulljames, the director, set out his vision for the production. That was the first time we got to know one another.”

“And very importantly,” Andreea chips in, “it was the first time we saw the costumes!”

Andreea picks up her iPhone and flicks through, in search of a photo.

I’d seen costumes hanging by the door as we crossed through the busy office. Each production has been allocated two lengthy clothes racks. Neat, handwritten labels on the coat-hangers reveal who will wear what onstage.

When Andreea finds the photo it shows a ball gown that is nothing short of spectacular. “The dresses are inspired by Marie-Antoinette,” she beams, holding up an image of herself navigating a vast pannier, replete with rococo frills. “Although the opera is set in an indiscriminate modern day setting, both the wedding scenes and dresses are very much inspired by the Ancien Règime.”

Her previous Mozart performances have mostly been breeches roles. She’s sang Cherubino twice for Glyndebourne Touring Opera and in her ENO debut.

A graduate of the ENO Young Artist Programme and former Times Rising Star of Classic Music, Kathryn has been singing since the age of five.

“I enjoyed singing pop songs” she says, “but I had the good fortune to have a teacher who recognized something heavier in my voice, and they pointed me towards opera“Without that encouragement I probably never would have found my way to opera” admits Kathryn, who applauds pioneering accessibility projects such as Garsington’s Opera For All.

Made possible with a grant from the Arts Council England, the project will deliver free public screenings direct from Wormsley for the next three years, including a screening at Magdalen College School, Oxford, on July 2.

What’s on at Wormsley Estate:

* Così fan tutte (sung in Italian) June 5, 7, 13, 19, 22, 25, 28 & July 3, 6, 8, 11 July. Also free screening at Magdalen College School, Oxford, on July 2.

* Intermezzo (sung in English) June 6, 8, 14, 20, 26 & July 2, 5, 7, 9.

* Death in Venice (sung in English) June 21, 23, 27 & July 1, 4, 10 July.

* A Midsummer Night’s Dream with incidental music July 16, 17, 18, 19.

* Book from garsingtonopera.org